The Truants Part 15

"Yes; there's more company in the saloon," he said. "I often sleep there myself. You are bound for the Mission ship, I suppose?"

"No; I want to find a man on the trawler _Perseverance_."

The captain turned. Warrisden could not see his face, but he knew from his att.i.tude that he was staring at him in amazement.

"Then you must want to see him pretty badly," he commented. "The No'th Sea in February and March is not a Bobby's job."

"Bad weather is to be expected?" asked Warrisden.

"It has been known," said the captain dryly; and before the lights of the Outer Gabbard winked good-bye on the starboard quarter at four o'clock in the morning, the _City of Bristol_ was taking the water over her deck.

Warrisden rolled on the floor of the saloon--for he could not keep his balance on the narrow bench--and tried in vain to sleep. But the strong light of a lamp, swinging from the roof, glared upon his eyes, the snores of his companions trumpeted in his ears. Moreover, the heat was intolerable. Five men slept in the bunks--Warrisden made a sixth.

At four in the morning the captain joined the party through his love of company. The skylight and the door were both tightly closed, a big fire burned in the stove, and a boiling kettle of tea perpetually puffed from its spout a column of warm, moist steam. Warrisden felt his skin p.r.i.c.kly beneath his clothes; he gasped for fresh air.

Living would be rough upon the fish-carrier, Chase had told him; and rough Warrisden found it. In the morning the steward rose, and made tea by the simple process of dropping a handful of tea into the kettle and filling it up with water. A few minutes later he brought a dish of ham and eggs from the galley, and slapped it down on the table.

"Breakfast," he cried; and the five men opened their eyes, rubbed them, and without any other preparation sat down and ate. Warrisden slipped up the companion, unscrewed the skylight and opened it for the s.p.a.ce of an inch. Then he returned.

The _City of Bristol_ was rolling heavily, and Warrisden noticed with surprise that all of the five men gave signs of discomfort. Surely, he thought, they must be used to heavy weather. But, nevertheless, something was wrong; they did not talk. Finally, the captain looked upwards, and brought his hand down upon the table.

"I felt something was wrong," said he; "the skylight's open."

All stared up to the roof.

"So it is."

"I did that," Warrisden said humbly.

At once all the faces were turned on him in great curiosity.

"Now why?" asked the captain. "Don't you like it nice and snug?"

"Yes; oh yes," Warrisden said hurriedly.

"Well, then!" said the captain; and the steward went on deck and screwed the skylight down.

"After all, it's only for thirty-six hours," thought Warrisden, as he subsequently bathed in a pail on deck. But he was wrong; for the Blue Fleet had gone a hundred miles north to the Fisher Bank, and thither the _City of Bristol_ followed it.

The _City of Bristol_ sailed on to the Fisher Bank, and found an empty sea. It hunted the Blue Fleet for half-a-dozen hours, and, as night fell, it came upon a single trawler with a great flare light suspended from its yard.

"They're getting in their trawl," said the captain; and he edged up within earshot.

"Where's the Blue Fleet?" he cried.

"Gone back to the Dogger," came the answer.

The captain swore, and turned southwards. For four days and nights Warrisden pitched about on the fish-carrier and learned many things, such as the real meaning of tannin in tea, and the innumerable medical uses to which "Friar's Balsam" can be put. On the morning of the fifth day the _City of Bristol_ steamed into the middle of the fleet, and her engines stopped.

These were the days before the steam-trawler. The sailing-ships were not as yet laid up, two by two, alongside Gorleston quay, and knocked down for a song to any purchaser. Warrisden looked over a grey, savage sea. The air was thick with spindrift. The waves leaped exultingly up from windward and roared away to leeward from under the cutter's keel in a steep, uprising hill of foam. All about him the sailing-boats headed to the wind, sinking and rising in the furrows, so that Warrisden would just see a brown topsail over the edge of a steep roller like a shark's fin, and the next instant the dripping hull of the boat flung out upon a breaking crest.

"You will have to look slippy when the punt from the _Perseverance_ comes alongside with her fish," the captain shouted. "The punt will give you a pa.s.sage back to the _Perseverance_, but I don't think you will be able to return. There's a no'th-westerly gale blowing up, and the sea is increasing every moment. However, there will be another cutter up to-morrow, and if it's not too rough you could be put on board of her."

It took Warrisden a full minute to realise the meaning of the captain's words. He looked at the tumbling, breaking waves, he listened to the roar of the wind through the rigging.

"The boats won't come alongside to-day," he cried.

"Won't they?" the skipper replied. "Look!"

Certainly some man[oe]uvre was in progress. The trawlers were all forming to windward in a rough semicircle about the cutter. Warrisden could see boat tackle being rigged to the main yards and men standing about the boats capsized on deck. They were actually intending to put their fish on board in the face of the storm.

"You see, with the gale blowing up, they mayn't get a chance to put their fish on board for three or four days after this," the captain explained. "Oh, you can take it from me. The No'th Sea is not a Bobby's job."

As Warrisden watched, one by one the trawlers dropped their boats, and loaded them with fish-boxes. The boats pushed off, three men to each, with their life-belts about their oil-skins, and came down with the wind towards the fish-carrier. The trawlers bore away, circled round the _City of Bristol_, and took up their formation to leeward, so that, having discharged their fish, the boats might drop down again with the wind to their respective ships. Warrisden watched the boats, piled up with fish-boxes, coming through the welter of the sea. It seemed some desperate race was being rowed.

"Can you tell me which is the boat from the _Perseverance?_" he asked.

"I think it's the fifth," said the captain.

The boats came down, each one the kernel of a globe of spray.

Warrisden watched, admiring how cleverly they chose the little gaps and valleys in the crests of the waves. Each moment he looked to see a boat tossed upwards and overturned; each moment he dreaded that boat would be the fifth. But no boat was overturned. One by one they pa.s.sed under the stern of the City of Bristol, and came alongside under the shelter of its wall.

The fifth boat ranged up. A man stood up in the stern.

"The _Perseverance_," he cried. "Nine boxes." And as he spoke a great sea leapt up against the windward bow of the cutter. The cutter rolled from it suddenly, her low bulwarks dipped under water on the leeward side, close by the _Perseverance_ boat.

"Shove off!" the man cried, who was standing up; and as he shouted he lurched and fell into the bottom of the boat. The two men in the bows pushed off with their oars; but they were too late. The cutter's bulwark caught the boat under the keel; it seemed she must be upset, and men and boxes whelmed in the sea, unless a miracle happened. But the miracle did happen. As the fish-cutter righted she scooped on to her deck the boat, with its boxes and its crew. The incident all seemed to happen within the fraction of a second. Not a man upon the fish-cutter had time to throw out a rope. Warrisden saw the cutter's bulwarks dip, the sailor falling in the boat, and the boat upon the deck of the cutter in so swift a succession that he had not yet realised disaster was inevitable before disaster was avoided.

The sailor rose from the bottom of the boat and stepped on deck, a stalwart, dripping figure.

"From the _Perseverance_, sir. Nine boxes," he said, looking up to the captain on the bridge; and Warrisden, leaning by the captain's side upon the rail, knew the sailor to be Tony Stretton. The accent of the voice would have been enough to a.s.sure him; but Warrisden knew the face too.

"This is the man I want," he said to the captain.

"You must be quick, then," the captain replied. "Speak to him while the boat is being unloaded."

Warrisden descended on to the deck.

"Mr. Stretton," said he.

The sailor swung round quickly. There was a look of annoyance upon his face.

"You are surely making a mistake," said he, abruptly. "We are not acquainted," and he turned back to the fish-boxes.

"I'm not making a mistake," replied Warrisden. "I have come out to the North Sea in order to find you."

Stretton ceased from his work and stood up. He led the way to the stern of the cutter, where the two men were out of earshot.

"Now," he said. He stood in front of Warrisden, in his sea-boots and his oilskins, firmly planted, yet swaying to the motion of the ship.

There was not merely annoyance in his face, but he had the stubborn and resolute look of a man not lightly to be persuaded. Standing there on the cutter's deck, backed by the swinging seas, there was even an air of mastery about him which Warrisden had not expected. His att.i.tude seemed, somehow, not quite consistent with his record of failure.